In a market rife with volatility amid the second wave, getting accurate insights on consumer demand is crucial. The massive shifts in consumer needs during Covid-19 reinforced the urgency of adaptability and real-time data is key in speeding up that process.
Omnilytics recently hosted a webinar featuring our CEO Kendrick Wong and Leonard Augustine Choo from Textile and Fashion Foundation (TaFF) Singapore. During the 45-minute session, we touched on the power of fashion market insights in guiding product development and supporting marketing efforts.
As it is our goal to equip fashion brands and retailers with an effective tool to take their business to new heights, Omnilytics has partnered with Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority in providing the grant to eligible companies. Through this partnership, we are offering Singaporean brands the chance to use our data platform for one year (valued at $5000) at no cost through the Digital Resilience Bonus grant.
Now, you too can gain access to real-time insights and utilise it to grow your brand.
Here’s how Omnilytics empower brands with actionable insights and how to leverage our platform to drive growth.
Full Visibility of Consumer Demand by Market
Keep a finger on the pulse of consumer demand with solutions like Trends Performance, which provides both a broad view of the market and the option to add granularity down to the product level.
With data from over 80,000 brands in 47 countries, brands can monitor the performance of trends in every market and adopt a localised approach. In the chart above, we’ve zoomed in on dresses in Singapore to determine the trending subcategories. This perspective immediately surfaces opportunities and risks in the market for brands to consider when building their assortment.
For instance, A-line dresses show a steady rise in demand with the highest trend score. Meanwhile, swing & trapeze dresses are waning in popularity despite a high product count.
Clicking on a subcategory will take you to its breakdown of trend performance over time, the best-selling product and the most stocked patterns, colours and materials.
A list of top retailers and brands in the market carrying A-line dresses is also displayed. Brands looking to boost their online presence by joining multi-label marketplaces can use this as a starting point in choosing the right channel with an ideal customer base.
We can also see if a trend is meeting consumer demand in contrast to its stock position with the median price and price spread, along with key performance metrics such as percentage of discount, replenished and sell-out rates.
Validate Consumer Demand before Designing
Trend validation is a crucial step that must be done before starting the design process, but one that many brands often overlook. Merchandisers and designers typically perform trend forecasting or conceptual exploration before designing. While still valid, brands can refine these processes by analysing certain design attributes in the market to measure their demand.
Omnilytics doesn’t tell you what to produce. We are a decision-making platform to validate any ideas you have in the creative process and ascertain whether those ideas are commercially viable.
Kendrick Wong, CEO of Omnilytics
Studying the sell-out performance of patterns and colours will establish early on the best-selling design attributes worth investing in.
In Singapore, retailers are investing heavily in floral dresses and gaining high returns. However, sell-out contributions for checks exceed the total product contribution at three major retailers, signalling a gap in the market that competitors have yet to capitalise on.
Like the pattern analysis, here we can see which colours have the highest sell-out contribution. Seasonal colours are historically tricky, but knowing which colours perform best for a certain subcategory minimises inventory risk. In this case, purple is amassing strong sales despite minimal contributions, indicating a missed opportunity for retailers.
Additionally, Omnilytics links each shade to its exact code on Pantone for easy reference when developing products.
Identify the Right Marketing Messaging
The local nuances in each market often require a targeted marketing approach that can only be honed with a complete view of the competitors’ visual merchandising.
The Visual Merchandising solution on the dashboard provides insights into the marketing messaging of major brands in a particular market. Daily screenshots of homepages and newsletters make it easy to understand what retailers are conveying to audiences and what resonates with them.
The keyword filter streamlines the search for specific retail events like Eid or the recent 10.10 sale and provides quick insights on your competitors’ promotional tactics. Brands can get a feel for the type of offers, edits and sales that are commonly deployed in the market and use the findings to improve their own strategies.
Develop a Robust Promotional Calendar
Timing is everything in a promotional strategy. When planning your promotional calendar, staying ahead of your competitors will allow you to launch at the perfect window that maximises profits. This is where a granular view of the competitors’ launch timing and discount pattern is essential, as laid out in our calendar solution.
H&M’s first discounts were concentrated in the months of December, August and September, with fewer markdowns in between. This suggests that the retailer relies on two critical periods in a year to clear inventory in contrast to other fast fashion retailers who launch discounts more frequently.
Pomelo Fashion exemplifies adhering to a strict calendar for new product launches. From its new-in calendar, we can conclude that Pomelo Fashion favours Tuesdays and Thursdays for new product launches. The retailer used to launch on Sundays consistently but reduced weekend launches since May.
Being able to anticipate your competitors’ tactics will improve your reaction time and allow you to stay competitive.
Get Access to Fashion Market Insights at No Cost
The overstock woes and deep discounting pits at the height of Covid-19 highlighted the dangers of developing an assortment without data validation. As we enter the second wave of the pandemic, access to accurate insights will play an integral part in accelerating recovery and driving growth.
Click here to find out if you are eligible for the Digital Resilience Bonus grant and catch the live demo of our dashboard below.
About the Author
Aqilah Zailan
Before her current fashion content writer role at Omnilytics, Aqilah Zailan was already decoding trends in the retail space. She now produces articles for Omnilytics’ blog and continues to keep a keen eye on shifting trends in the fashion industry.
